When subsidies and tariffs are applied to imports with fluctuating prices, it is shown that the output response of domestic producers depends on market structure and their attitude toward risk. The domestic industry response is contrasted under two types of market structure, a monopoly and a...

Using the menu-auction approach to endogenous determination of tariffs and allowing additionally for lobby formation itself to be endogenous, this paper analyzes the impact of unilateral trade liberalization by one country on its partner's trade policies. We find that such unilateral...

Recently competition policy has become an important trade policy issue, since many policy makers now see competition policy as an important instrument to secure market access' to foreign markets. This paper analyzes this issue both from a theoretical point of view and from the review of the...

It is widely believed that U.S. trade deficits have displaced workers from highly paid manufacturing jobs into less well-paid service employment, contributing to declining incomes for the nation as a whole. Although proponents of this view do not usually think of it this way, this analysis falls...

A coalition of well-organized semiconductor producers along with compliant government agencies (USTR and the Commerce Department) brought about a 1986 trade agreement in which the United States forced Japan to end the 'dumping' of semiconductors in all world markets and to help secure 20 percent...

The last two centuries witnessed the rise and fall of empires. We construct a model which rationalises this in terms of the changing trade gains from empires. In the model, empires are arrangements that reduce trade cost between an industrial metropole and the agricultural periphery. During...

U.S. balance-of-payments problems in the 1960s remain poorly understood. In this paper I argue that they had two aspects. On the one hand there was a problem of real overvaluation, evident in the erosion of the current account and reflecting the reluctance of the Fed, the Executive and Congress...

This paper examines the political economy of U.S. trade policy around the time of the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, a period when policy was unconstrained by trade agreements. We consider a model of politically-optimal trade policy for a large country that can influence its terms of trade and...

I study how people understand and reason about trade and which factors shape their views on trade policy. I design and run large-scale surveys and experiments in the U.S. to elicit respondents' knowledge and understanding of trade. I also ask about their perceived economic gains and...

The purpose of this paper is to describe United States trade policy since World War II, and to assess the possibility for ongoing U.S.trade-policy leadership. U.S. trade policy has shown remarkable consistency since World War II. It has never been as purely free-trade-focussed as some...